


She'll think of something

by Vivianstreet



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Agent Donnelly lives, Canon Divergence, Gen, I feel really strongly about this, season 2 episode 12
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-14
Updated: 2015-11-14
Packaged: 2018-05-01 14:43:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5209787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vivianstreet/pseuds/Vivianstreet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They don’t meet in person after Reese is released from Rikers; they’re not idiots.  (Season 2, Episode 12)</p>
            </blockquote>





	She'll think of something

**Author's Note:**

> I've only watched through Season 2, Episode 17 so far. This whole thing happened because I feel very strongly that Agent Donnelly should have survived (and ended up working with them, as I said on my [tumblr](http://neuroticchihuahua.tumblr.com/post/133011745159/fbi-agent-donnelly-i-love-him-he-looks-sad-and)\--feel free to message me! I'd love to talk about POI). I should warn you, for a fic that was originally conceived just to save Donnelly, there's not actually a lot of Donnelly in here.

They don’t meet in person after Reese is released from Rikers; they’re not idiots. It’s not paranoia if they’re actually out to get you, and Agent Donnelly had seemed rather put-out by Carter’s quick conclusion to the hunt for the man in a suit. Put-out and…unconvinced. 

Yeah, they’re not idiots.

Reese wanders around the city that night, passing cameras, looking for tails. Donnelly is not subtle. He’s more of a cop than a spy; being visible and running in packs is where his authority comes from. No back-up now, though. Odds are no one but Reese and Finch know where he is, what he’s doing. It’s little and big all at once, that he’s allowed himself to be separated from the herd due this little unsuitable obsession. There’s a chance here, if they could only figure out how to exploit it. 

Despite Finch’s protests—despite common sense—Reese can’t bring himself to let Donnelly follow him unchallenged. He slips into a crowd of people leaving a bar and takes a shortcut down an alley. Still there. He descends into the subway but doesn’t take it, instead winding through tunnels until he emerges several blocks away. Still there. He takes an abrupt turn into a park, wanders between lights, surreptitiously checks himself for trackers. Finds one, standard FBI issue. He sighs, veers off the path. 

“And here I thought he’d done something impressive. Finch, he put a tracker on me.” 

“Yes, I know. It’d be better if you let him follow you for a bit; reduce suspicion.” 

“No, Agent Donnelly and I have seen quite enough of each other. I’m going to lose him.” He’ll get Donnelly’s eyes off him, toss the tracker, and go back to the apartment for some rest. The beating at Rikers was far from the worst he’d ever had, but he’s getting old. New injuries combine with old ones, left over from the days when he was young and it was a matter of pride to tough it out without medical assistance. 

And from later, when he was older but counting his life expectancy in single digits.

He’d like to tell himself that the injuries—the eye swollen shut, the dizziness, the stiffened muscles—are the only reason she gets the drop on him. One moment he’s listening for the scuff of Donnelly’s shoes, the next Stanton’s materialized from the aether, gun trained on his gut, close enough to have no chance of missing but far enough away that he can’t grab it out of her hand.

“Hello, John.” It’s three years later and half the world away, but her expression as she trains the weapon on him is stunningly familiar. The déjà vu blinds him, jerks his head up to listen for the airstrike he knows is coming. It takes a split second to reseat himself in the present ( _just a mild concussion, right_ ), but it was enough time for the FBI agent to catch up. 

“I knew it.” Donnelly sounds grim and triumphant, like he hadn’t wanted his darkest suspicious to be true, but is glad to find he has within himself the capacity to anticipate such a treasonous alliance. A flashlight clicks on, plays over Reese’s back, floods Stanton’s face an instant before her gun orients itself on Donnelly. Reese knows what’s coming next; two shots fired to the chest, one to the head, then back on the original target. He knows the rhythm, knows the steps, moves the moment the gun is no longer on him. She gets two shots off before he’s on her, knocking her hand away, trying to get close and short circuit the fight before it happens. He knows he’s in no shape to fight fair. He gets an arm around her neck, scrabbles for the gun still in her right hand. She barely resists. Just as he processes how strange it is that she hasn’t tried to escape yet her left hand comes up with a syringe.

He doesn’t feel himself hit the ground.

  


Carter’s home, for once. The last couple days have been bad, but now it’s over. For once there are no numbers, no voices in her ear, no double-agent acts to maintain. 

Taylor wanted to go out with friends, some kids she’s never met (did she ever know his friends? She must have, at some point), but she persuaded him to stay in and watch American Idol with her. It used to be their thing, back when she wasn’t trying to work two or three jobs at the same time. Now he’s at that age where he’d like to pretend he’s too cool to watch TV with his mom. He tries to stay aloof, but before long he’s participating as much as she is, protesting the judges’ decisions, critiquing the faces contestants make while singing. It feels immeasurably good to reconnect with her kid. She might not know his friends, or the names of all his teachers (his grandmother went to his last parent-teacher night because Carter was busy aiding and abetting the kidnapping of that married couple who’d chosen murder over divorce), but they still have this. He disappears into his room soon as the show ends, but that’s fine.

She’s more relaxed than she’s been in months. With no stress to stave it off, the late nights and early mornings start making themselves known. She wonders if it would be worth it to get off the couch and remind Taylor to go to bed at a decent hour. Sleep makes the decision for her.

She not out for anywhere near as long as she should be before her phone starts ringing. Cop reflexes kick in and she answers it immediately, before she’s completely conscious. It’s gibberish until her brain comes online, “—phone’s disabled I can’t track him, Agent Donnelly was tailing him but I don’t think he’s responsible, I’m on my way right now but I need backup, Detective Carter! _Please respond_.”

“Wait, Finch. Slow down. What?” 

“Agent Donnelly was tailing Mr. Reese. He went into a park to try to lose him but something happened and now Mr. Reese isn’t responding. I think Donnelly’s dead—I’m monitoring his phone and he hasn’t moved or said anything since Mr. Reese disappeared. I’m sending you the GPS coordinates now.”

Carter is torn. No, actually—she isn’t. She wishes there was some question as to whether she is the kind of person to leave her teenage son alone in the middle of the night with no more explanation than a quickly scrawled note pinned to the fridge. She wishes she would feel some hesitation about getting embroiled once again in Reese and Finch’s world of spies and shady government agents. But no. She’d made her choice long ago. 

  


Finch gets there before she does, and of _course_ he doesn’t bother waiting for backup. She would be annoyed if she didn’t already know it’s pointless. She’s not sure how integral Finch and Reese are to the continuation of the man-in-a-suit business, as they both were able to keep on saving people—in the short term—when one or the other was out of action. However, for the long-term health of the _Finch-and-Reese_ business, it was all or none. She was under no illusion that Finch would hang around for very long if Reese was lying dead in that cluster of trees.

Pointless.

When she arrives, he’s standing there with a portable flood light at his feet and a smashed phone in his hand, Bear whining and straining at the leash. It’s a moment before she sees the body lying outside the light’s reach.

Finch speaks as she approaches the form, voice faint and detached. “Ah, Detective. Good of you to come. I was correct; they destroyed his phone.” She kneels down. Even with her light-dazed eyes she can tell it’s Agent Donnelly. She checks his pulse. He’s alive. She looks at Finch, standing in the light, doing something with his phone that is emphatically _not_ calling 911.

“What the hell, Finch! Donnelly’s still alive—did you even bother to check?” She pats his chest, feels body armor and bullet holes, waves off whatever Finch is saying in his own defense. Reese can wait until they get the agent stabilized. “Bring the light over, I need to see if he’s bleeding.” Wisely, he does. She gets Donnelly’s coat and shirt open, sees two flattened rounds, unfastens the vest, checks underneath. There’s some impressive bruising, but no bullets made it through. She lets out the breath she didn’t know she’d been holding, checks the rest of him for bleeding, locates the source of his unconsciousness. “Looks like he fell over and hit his head. Probably saved his life—I’m sure whoever shot him would have finished the job if he’d still been moving.”

“Yes, yes, that’s all very good,” Finch paces away in agitation, returns. “I believe Mr. Reese must be alive, but confined or incapacitated in some manner. Bear didn’t find any blood, at least. What are you doing?”

“Calling an ambulance for Donnelly—what do you think I’m doing?”

“No, you can’t do that!” She looks at him, incredulous. Finch waves the hand holding Bear’s leash, gesturing expansively. “If we let him go he’s just going to keep getting in the way, and we can’t afford any interference. Call Fusco, have him help you move the agent to—I have a safe house nearby, it’s—“ He trails off, looking through his phone for the address.

“What’s _wrong_ with you? You’re supposed to _save people_. This man needs medical attention.” 

Finch looks to the sky, as though praying for patience. “I’m sure he’ll be _fine_ , Detective. And let me remind you, this is the man whose dogged pursuit of our mutual friend landed him in _prison_ , where he was _beaten_ by criminals—several of whose incarceration he was _directly responsible for_.” Ah, yes. One of the nicer qualities Reese possesses is the disinclination to hold a grudge against those who harm him. Finch seems determined to hold enough grudge for both of them. “We can’t afford to be generous, Detective. I believe Mr. Reese has been…recruited…by the same woman who turned Agent Snow into a walking bomb. I don’t know what her plan is, but it’s safe to assume it will be very, very bad, and we are the only ones in a position to stop it.”

Carter allows herself one moment to imagine Reese with explosives strapped to his chest, following orders given at the behest of some foreign power without his—or any other American’s—best interests at heart. She hopes he has enough of an instinct for self-preservation left that he’ll hold on until they find him.

She hopes they _can_ find him.

And Donnelly—Donnelly is still unconscious. It’s a bad sign, and one that’s getting worse with each passing minute. She turns to Finch. “When he wakes up, _if_ he wakes up, I can guarantee you he’ll be in no shape to interfere with anything.” She glares until he looks away. “Get yourself out of here. Keep looking for John and let me know if you find anything. I’m going to call an ambulance for Agent Donnelly and stay with him until you have something better for me to do. However you feel about him, he does not deserve to be left alone and unconscious out here.”

He gives her a look, wounded and unrepentant. He takes the flood light with him, which is sort of good because she doesn’t know how she’d explain its presence if anyone asks, and sort of bad because the only other light she has is the one on her cell phone, and her battery isn’t anywhere near full. 

She checks Donnelly’s pulse again to make sure he didn’t die during the intervening minutes, then calls 911.

If anyone asks what she’s doing in the park at night with an unconscious FBI agent and no police radio, she’ll…think of something.

  


Donnelly is rushed for a CT scan, and then immediately into surgery. Carter feels guilty for all the time she’d wasted arguing with Finch. She stays at the hospital as long as she can, though she’s not sure how much of her tenacity is due to genuine concern, and how much she’s doing just to spite Finch. She wonders—not for the first time—how a touchy, antisocial guy ended up in charge of a project which required, at its core, such dedicated selflessness. 

It’s easy to see why Reese was chosen, though. It is impossible to imagine a job that would suit him better. She has tried—and failed, repeatedly—to square the remorseless, coldblooded killer that Snow, and later Donnelly, told her of with the man who routinely puts himself in danger to protect strangers, and who shoots to disable whenever possible. 

She wonders what she will tell Donnelly when he wakes up.

She wonders if there will be any Donnelly left to tell.


End file.
